Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) systems are growing very fast with the demand by the world wide wireless communication industry. As wireless local-area networks become more prevalent, you are likely to start testing the challenging semiconductor wireless devices that make WLAN possible. Wireless devices are complex, system-on-chip (SOC) devices that operate at high frequencies, but the price of these devices must be kept in line with consumer expectations; therefore, testing costs must be minimal. However, it is common for manufacturers of wireless devices, such as mobile phone, WLAN interface card, access point and so on, to perform their transmitter and receiver measurements by manually placing a wireless device in a anechoic chamber while cabling the output thereof to the test system, by which only one wireless device can be put in the anechoic chamber and be tested at a time. Therefore, it is time consuming to complete a batch test while there are many wireless devices waiting to be test since each wireless device is required to be connected to a plurality of testing equipments and put in the anechoic chamber manually after the previous-tested device had been disconnected and taken out. A solution to speed up the testing is by increasing the amount of the anechoic chamber so as to test more than one wireless device at a time. However, this solution will cause the increase of testing cost, that is, the solution can only be accomplished with more testing equipment and more man power for performing the testing. Hence, a highly efficient, rapid and low-cost test system and method is in great demand for manufacturers of wireless devices.
A typical test system today for wireless devices would include a plurality of test stations for measuring parameters of the transmitter and receiver thereof, e.g. maximal output power, minimal input power and Packet Error Rate (PER), etc. To test the receiver at the first test station, a golden radio selected from a Golden sample is being transmitted through the attenuator to the wireless device-under-test (DUT) to ensure it can detect the transmitted packets at specific power levels, which are set by the attenuator. The PC software as control unit accesses a register in the wireless DUT to count the received packets, so if the golden radio sends 1000 packets at the specific power level and 900 packets are recorded in the register as having been received, 10% of the packets obviously have been lost. For transmitter testing performed at the second test station, the wireless DUT is commanded to produce a signal on a particular channel. Output power is measured and viewed on a power-meter, and the signal's spectral characteristics are viewed on a spectrum analyzer. The goal is to ensure that the wireless device produces the required output power, on the right frequency, with an acceptable distortion level. From the above description, it is noted that only one wireless device can be put in the anechoic chamber and be tested at a time, in addition, it is required to manually cable the wireless device-under-test at each test station.
Hence, the present invention discloses a system and method capable of simultaneously testing two wireless devices, which not only can reduce test cost, but also have better testing efficiency.